Does Windranger Need A Buff?
About a year ago, Windranger was the bane of all pubs. A terrifying presence and winrate across all skillbrackets made her the persona non grata among pub players. It felt appropriate to ask the question, whether that “pub stomper” deserved a nerf or not. Icefrog did nerf her, even if it was only a slight nerf towards Shackleshot. Since that nerf, Windranger has been in steady decline and just recently she entered the “Repick” category in our 7.xx Pub Tier List with a below 44% winrate in the Very High Skill bracket. As a result, today we have to ask ourselves the question: Does she deserve, or possibly need a buff?
Anything She Can Do, Somebody Else Can Do Better
Windranger has primarily been a core in Dota. Her skillset excels when she’s ahead and for a support she doesn’t offer any stability in both laning stage and midgame, as her spells are heavily dependant on superior positioning, mostly through a Blink Dagger, and she’s very squishy.
Before she became popular, or rather, before people could even think about making her popular, Windranger was often compared to 
Mirana. Both were rather squishy ranged heroes with an unreliable nuke and disable. Mirana however, clearly has skills to offer as a support. Her Arrow is much deadlier at level 1 than a Shackleshot in most cases and Moonlight Shadow is a great spell for teamfights and ganks. Of course, Mirana also has better farming capabilities now and her itemization with an Aghanim’s Scepter allow her to be much more reliable in the mid to late game as well.
And this inadequancy is pretty much the story for Windranger in her current state. She doesn’t necessarily offer anything, that others couldn’t offer either. Her physical burst damage with the ultimate is nice and it is unique, but she also doesn’t itemize well to really build on it. Usually she requires a 
Blink Dagger and an 
Aghanim's Scepter, which is fine, as both items definitely increase her killing and survival potential. At the same time though, neither item is a top tier purchase. As heroes become tankier, especially now with early armor or stats talents, Windranger doesn’t have the necessary damage output to reliably kill anything but supports or squishy cores in the midgame.
Untalented?
7.xx is the era of talents. Multiple heroes have already changed their item builds based on talents and many more will likely follow suit. Windranger’s talents however aren’t exactly confidence inspiring--on a first glimpse anyway.
+15 damage is the lowest damage value of any damage talent and while +4 mana regen may be one of the highest mana regen values, it doesn’t really fit the Windranger item build well. It’s certainly nice, but for a core position, the 15 damage are likely more valuable.
The additional spell amplification later on may be nice, but it is too late to be relevant. A core Windranger will hardly make use of additional spell amplification at level 20, at least not with the traditional build, and a support/semi-core Windranger could probably use the additional magic resistance for more survivability. Either way, it's a nice gimmick to have, but at level 20 it hardly matters.
Windranger's talents feel weak and meaningless. It may not be fair to compare her to the likes of Ember Spirit in that regard, but it certainly doesn't look better for her when compared to other heroes either. Queen of Pain and Puck both get significantly more damage early on, and while Puck also has the choice between magic resistance and spell amplification at level 20, it does better compliment Puck's own skillset, with 3 magic damage spells.
So if the traditional build isn't heavily supported through the talents, is there maybe an alternative build that is supported?
Magic Damage Windranger? Hybrid?
+4 mana regen, + 16 intelligence, + 12% spell amplification and -5s Powershot cooldown--all these talents speak to an alternate way of playing Windranger that hasn’t been here before.
Windranger has filled the niche of utility core before, building into items such as 
Force Staff and 
Mekansm. Unfortunately for her, the role of a utility core is not as popular as it used to be and usually teams opt for a tanky hero in that position, so that crucial teamfight items aren’t lost because of quick burst from the opponents.
Another opportunity for Windranger to build into another playstyle however, would be to embrace a more magic damage orientated approach like Ember Spirit. Spell amplification and a partial cooldown reduction are similar to Ember Spirit’s talent. 
Veil of Discord is also an excellent item to pick up on Windranger, as she usually starts out with a Null Talisman anyway and the stats the item provides are really good on her.
As much as this sounds really good in theory, it doesn’t really work out in practice. Even at level 20 with the spell amplification talent and a Veil of Discord, her Powershot will still only deal roughly 460 damage (after reduction). An Ember Spirit can deal twice that at level 10. The lack of reliable damage output, both physical and magical, make her midgame comparatively weak to other cores. Farming may be easier for her than for others, but in most cases she needs a mobility item to hunt for kills, which sets her back quite a bit.
She could potentially go for a hybrid build, where she transitions from a Veil and Blink, though the Blink may be optional here, into a 
Maelstrom, which synergizes well with the Veil. Afterwards, she could go back into the more physical damage focused build. Once again however, the talents don't necessarily support that build either.
Does She need a Buff?
Whatever build Windranger does go for, her talents so far seem rather underwhelming and her pickrate of barely 11% reflects what the majority of pub players think: Windranger probably needs a buff.
It took several tweaks and meta changes for her to become the pub stomper she was at the end of 6.85, so what does it take this time? Icefrog has already started tweaking her, with cooldown decreases to Windrun and talent improvements even in 7.01.
In a meta where cores need tempo and strong lategame scaling, Windranger feels underpowered and slow, but focusing on a new build could revitalize her. That build may just be a patch, a buff or a Slahser video away from reality.
1st
in other words i'm retarded
2nd im also retarded
3rd.
Finally.
4th.
A little less retarded.
5th, first post ever lol
I feel like she really reserved a buff, maybe new patch wants her to become support?
Personal suggestion: Adds talents like +Critical or +2 ways for Powershot(like Mirana Lv.25) and more damage.
7th MegaBrain
would be good if it was +5% amp/20 dmg at 10, 12%resist/ +20 powershot dmg at 20 and shackles duration instead of range
Maybe an aghs rework on multi,(where you can cast multiple hero's) or AOE.. or make her ulti to proc crit....or just remode her like they did with void...
9th now I can rest in peace
Well, she destroys MK really hard, which is the most annoying early-mid game hero now. Still one of the best hero to get solo pick offs too once she got into position (It's really hard to burst her single handedly). Her talent tree is so bad though, I agreed.
It think that outside of a bigger chest, the best buff would be to remove, or at least reduce the attack damage reduction of her ultimate and make her less reliable on the Scepter. Scepter is about as core on WR as it is on Mirana, but Mirana is at least capable of getting actual solo kills without Scepter, unlike WR. Once again however, the
her talents are shit and the game moves too quickly now for her to come online and be a scary presence.
She still needs to get that whole aghs - damage (crit or mael) - blink itemization going to be really strong, and by the time she does that its not that meaningful.
She needs talents that can somewhat take the place of one of those items. A crit talent would be good.
they must rework arc warden - his clone MUST be same color (manta style, phantom lancer, chaos knight, meepo, naga - all of them have more clones and its really hard to find out which is enemy hero. ) Arc has one clone almost every minute...
- next thing is his 25 talent with more sparks dmg - this is a joke! In late game all enemies have bkb, tons of hp etc. 100 magic dmg won't help.
- 10% of cooldown - really? 4 seconds less on your ultimate?
-he can't heal himself
- can't escape
- all his spells you can evade just by using 1% of your brain. His flux is useles against clones heroes, wraight is weak against more tanky ones (spent all mana on doom in early game- did nothing to him), magnetic field weak against melee and ranged who will make one step closer and enter this field...
His ultimate - long cooldown, diferent colours, so enemies don't need to use dust, they know which is real; can't heal real Zet, meh, just no...
Just a bigger creep
^ The fuck are you talking about?
gee you abandoned a game as arc warden and randomly decide to bitch about it here?
froggo pls buff qop
^lmao the abandon. ur such a stalker dude rofl
TL;DR. YES.
She could potentially go for a hybrid build, where she transitions from a Veil and Blink, though the Blink may be optional here, into a Maelstrom, which synergizes well with the Veil. Afterwards, she could go back into the more physical damage focused build. Once again however, the
windranger needs a buff but so do arc and puck
especially arc i mean 38% winrate for a hero who doesn't actually require team coordination is so bad
they can buff her with making her b**bs bigger XD
but yes I think wind ranger and sven both need buff and a better talent tree
Veil Blink mjoll octarine radiance shivas caster WR anyone?
see me in the club with it tatted on my chest
@baron haffy ducreux
thanks, accidentally deleted it when I inserted a bunch of images :<
She's so bad she's not even fun to play anymore, even in casual settings. Like you said, there is basically never a game where some other hero can't do her job but much more reliably.
She is bad at farming, but I think that keeps her balanced. Not every core needs to be a farm machine. She should rely on early game aggression and pushing her advantage. I liked the solution of making her less Agh's dependent.
@HosseiN__Kaka
Bigger boobs buff, on an archer hero? Nah, make her smaller or flat and I call that a buff.
make her muscly as fuck that's what I'd call buff
In spanish it is persona "NO" grata :3
this is funny I remember a phase in dota 1 days when people said the exact same thing about windranger being jack of all trades master of none
Not even a mention on the windrun being dispellable
Her talents are good
The only thing that needs buff is Windrun, and Focus Fire's CD.
Do you people even play WR?
There are lots of possibilities to upgrade a lot of things about WR via talent tree (a Q that doesn't need to latch or hits extra targets etc), but those are all kind of side problems. Nitpicks.
I think the second biggest problem with the hero lies in powershot. I play WR offlane and almost never have any use for powershot because it's too annoying to spend that much mana to only do 90 dmg. It might travel far but it is soooo situational that it's far more useful to pump points into shackleshot and wait for the perfect moment to ult. It would be better if it skipped creeps altogether. Worse for farming, sure, but that leads into my next point.
The biggest problem with WR is that she is an INT hero. It works horribly into her ultimate, and most classic builds involve damage items like crit stick and mjolnir. It's bad enough that she needs blink and aghs to be effective, but she is hindered even further by the fact that any other items she might go for damage wise have to be straight damage, not agility based, to be efficient. I know that means a lot of tweaking to damage, mana costs, etc would have to happen, but seeing as her primary source of damage is right clicks, the best method I see of bringing her back is to, well, have the carpet match the drapes. Wish I could find a better way of saying that...that was foul...
Oh, I know dagon is sometimes picked up on her, but that's kind of really situational and she doesn't naturally have the mana pool to make that a staple build. I'm more than willing to lose that build in favor of making her an AGI hero.
33rd.
Which means I'm slow...
Well, my main problem with windranger is that, while being squishy, she has an amazing escape early on, which unfortunately doesn't translate well to late game, an early MKB is all you need to screw up any plans made. If compared to other escape spells, windrun really falls flat on the late game, if we look at Necro's new escape skill, while making him extra vulnerable to magic attacks, leaves him invulnerable against physical attacks even against a MKB, and Necro is really tanky, when compared to a hero as squishy as WR.
Going back to the talent tree, I never understood why some heroes got HUGE lvl 25 talents while others got crap, granted some of the lvl 25 talents were necessary (i.e. Veno's Ward buff), but Mirana's +2 arrows was uncalled for, she was doing just fine with only one arrow.
I was hoping for something a bit less underwhelming, I remember when Diretide was up, and WR had a shackleshot that could latch to 5 targets at once, having +2 targets that could be latched on at level 25 would be a lot better, it would penalize bad positioning and could be a potential initiator on the late game, or maybe having the option to reduce all incoming physical damage by 100% when Windrun is active, making it possible to a core WR to be present in the team fight without running the risk of getting one shotted.
Plus, the scepter should be dropped completely, her ultimate on level 6 is good, but a 50% penalty is just too much when it comes to a hero that doesn't benefit from being a dex hero. a 30%/15%/0% would be enough to see her having a higher winrate, and moving the scepter to a skill that doesn't scale well to the late game (either windrun or powershot).
Windranger is one of those heroes that are very hard to balance, it'll always be either broken or irrelevant, but we've seen heroes rise from the ashes before, morphling is a hero that, while not being the beast he was back in 2012, is still a force to be reckoned with.
Wind doesn't need much of a buff, just different talents. People need to play more to her strengths as a hero. The new map is extremely good for her due to the lanes been shrunk down in size which allows for much easier shackles on heroes, as well as there are just more trees spread throughout the map. She can pick off almost any hero in the game once you have blink aghs.
Unfortunately her talents are really bad. They are trying to make her some sort of caster which sure sounds nice but doesn't actually work. Because that's not what she does. I only end up taking the regen/int/amp/cd due to it allowing her to push out waves faster, due to if you are taking damage as her there is something wrong. Attack range is pretty useless on her because of focus fires cast range.
Talents which she could use: 7 armor instead of magic resistance. 150 extra shackle range instead of 100 attack range. No powershot damage reduction instead of powershot cooldown.
However if there were to be changes for her, they would mainly need to be fairly minor.
Some examples: +4 base damage, +1 base armor, -10 powershot mana cost, +5 base movement speed, or +0.25 unlatched shackleshot stun duration. A crazy one would be shackleshot does 25/50/75/100 damage.
She really doesn't need much to be good, just needs people to play her much better.
@end Arc Warden is the best hero in Dota. So incredibly broken. Unfortunately nobody knows how to play him properly, so when he's random it's normally an auto loss.
@brockhall If she was an agi hero she would be a lot worse. There isn't a single agi item which you would build on her if she was agi. Butterfly is useless and Eblade is terrible on her as well. With int you have access to bloodthorn and Scythe for damage which provides much more use for the hero. Her being AGI does no benefit to her, INT is just much better. Also if you build Dagon on her, you should really not be playing WR. The items which you should be building are aghs, blink, maelstorm(not mjollnir), mkb, daed, sheep, bloodthorn, skadi, satanic, bkb, or linkens.
Wind really just doesn't get the respect she needs in terms of playing the hero. She seems really simple to play but has a very high skill gap.
I feel the hero needs a full rework. She is sort of useless at this point. She can't farm, deal reliable magic damage, unreliable even though decent lock and the ult... I can't even comment on how useless it is. While you are busy targeting and melting 1 guy, you might get ganked on with the other 4. The escape/survivability spell she has is really good but falls off very hard in late game because enemies get hex, abyssal etc.
какие нахуй бафы?вы ебанутые?её нахуй нерфить надо ,особенно связку ебаную
The talent tree of windranger is invented by a retard. Just throw whatever seems useful into that tree that's it.
I love playing windranger with disable and decent magic damage on early game, but fuck it. She is squishy and her mana tank is depleted easily.
I can totally see why her pick rate is declining. Believe me they won't buff windranger but they will nerf ember which this article brought into comparison, that's exactly how retarded the developer is.
Не заслуживает
Probably change her talent tree I mean what really is the purpose and what direction is her talent tree going?
No shes perfectly balanced the way she is previosly she was overpowerd as fuck and i can understand previous FOTM f'gs crying now over her being bad but in all honesty shes is pretty decent as she is.
But again WR FOTM SPAMMERS will cry themself everyday shes balanced until she is OP again.
Personly i think she could get the "6.58
Focus Fire icon.png Focus Fire no longer has a 10 attacks limit."
Back a other way to do it is to simply minimize the shackle latch aoe to make it skill required instead of retard easy.
But i would prefer if they did some radical rework similar to how they changed Naix's bkb ultimate, 40% slow or Undying from int to str in 6.58 and the how they removed the raise dead making it impossible to jungle the same way as you used to.
I think to play WR now is a suport .. with tranquil boots .. silent item .. and dager ..
HER BEWBS literally need a buff
@Kubera
I don't think you understood the point I was making. WR as she currently stands doesn't do much magic damage inherently. Her ult does physical dmg, her powershot is underwhelming magic dmg, and shackeshot has negligible damage. Buying intelligence items would still be useful on her(ish), but you could open more options for right click damage items like Manta and Hurricane Pike to have more impact. Ring of Aquila would also be far more impactful. You could (and should) still buy Maelstrom (I meant maelstrom), blink, aghs, skadi, and any straight damage items. In fact, the only items you suggested that are primarily int items are bloodthorn and sythe, and that's definitely luxury item territory. Every other item you mentioned would provide the same benefits to her as it currently does, as they are all even increases to all attributes.
And yeah, if you are auto building dagon, you are wrong. It's a cheese strat that only works in stupid situations.
Ты что совсем слепой на авторе - открой Дота вики и узри сцуко что последние 12 ска блть патчей ВРку ТОЛЬКО А П А Л И, всмысле блть ты назвал свою статью - заслуживает ли она апов ? Ей нужно менять скилы - она проигрывает потому что это герой 45-той минуты - то есть очень жосткий лейт - а доо лейта она не может никак повлиять на игру !!!
She's need buff emergency
how about a buff to arc warden, he did not need to be nerfed like he was at all.
what about furion ? never played in pro matches and sucks in pubs